Live Audio Wrestling (also known as The LAW) was a Canadian sports radio talk show hosted by "The Mouth" Dan Lovranski and Jason Agnew. The program primarily focused on news and events related to professional wrestling (such as WWE) and mixed martial arts.
First premiering in May 1997 as an internet radio show, LAW later shifted to conventional radio on several stations in the Toronto area, and moved to CHUM-AM in 2011. Due to the show's popularity, TSN's Off the Record has featured past and current co-hosts of the radio program as guest panelists over the years.
Live Audio Wrestling announced its cancellation on October 30, 2017, due to cutbacks following Anthem Sports & Entertainment's acquisition of TNA Wrestling, which impacted The LAWs syndicator, Fight Network Radio. Most of its segments and spin-off shows have since migrated to a new website, known as "Post Wrestling".
History
Live Audio Wrestling premiered on May 23, 1997 as an internet radio show through Virtually Canadian, with Faarooq as its first guest. The show aired online for a year and a half before moving to CJCL, The Fan 590however, it was still only broadcast online, since the show was broadcast as replacement programming due to NBA policies prohibiting the station's online feed from airing Toronto Raptors games. In an effort to secure studio time, the show was taped early in the morning. Due to popular demand and listener support, The LAW soon became part of The Fans normal lineup, airing in the early afternoon on Saturdays.
The show later expanded to include a two-hour late-night program on Sunday nights from 1:00 to 3:00 a.m., later moved to Saturdays at 11:00 p.m. in late 1999, while the afternoon edition moved to 5:00 p.m. In February 1999, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter began a weekly segment during the program.
The LAW aired on The Fan 590 until September 2000 when it moved to rival station CFYI Talk 640 as a companion to the station's recently acquired radio broadcasts of Toronto Maple Leafs games. The evening broadcast was moved from Saturdays to Sundays. In April 2001, the afternoon edition of The LAW was dropped during the station's re-launch under the Mojo Radio format, while The LAW remained on the station through 2006
In January 2005, Fight Network purchased a majority stake in The LAW, and in February of that same year announced that they had secured an agreement with Broadcast News for national syndicated the program through Fight Network Radio. Affiliates of the group (aside from its flagship Toronto stations) included: CKST Vancouver, CFRN Edmonton, CFGO Ottawa, CHMJ Vancouver, and CJOB Winnipeg.
In July 2006, The LAW moved to CFRB and retained its 11pm time-slot. In the Fall 2006, LAW announced that the show would eventually begin to air in simulcast on Fight Network, though nothing came of it.
The show is ranked No. 1 in the demographic of male, on talk radio in the Toronto market, in its time slot. In April 2006, The Bureau of Broadcast Measurement released their spring ratings with The LAW ranking No. 1 among Males 25 - 49 on Sunday nights with an 18.7 share and also scoring a 17.8 share among Males 18 – 34.
Starting in the winter of 2007, John Pollock began to host an extended, online edition of The LAW called Live Audio Xtra. The segment is available to those who listen to the archived edition of the show on The LAW website, as an add-on to the original radio production. Shortly after its launch, Dan Lovranski began to co-host the segment, answering e-mail questions. Starting with the January 20th 2008 edition, Live Audio Xtra began to take call-in questions from listeners who were unable to get on the air during the radio portion of the program. This segment of the show was discontinued for a brief period of time, but returned to The LAW in 2011.
Satellite radio, interim podcast, and CHUM The LAW aired its final edition on CFRB on January 11, 2009, moving to the Sirius Satellite Radio channel Hardcore Sports Radio (later known as The Score Satellite Radio), maintaining its Sunday night timeslot, and still being produced from CFRB's studios. After the closure of The Score Satellite Radio in August 2011, The LAW briefly became a podcast on the Fight Network website; using the same format as the radio versions but without call-in segments.
On October 9, 2011, The LAW moved to CHUM AM; while the program maintained its traditional 11:00 p.m. timeslot, it is preempted by Sunday Night Football during the NFL season.
The LAW began airing on CHUM's sister station CFTE in Vancouver on September 9, 2012. The LAW currently does not air on any other TSN Radio station.
Cancellation
On the morning of October 30, 2017, the LAW issued a statement:
The announcement came fourteen hours after the October 29 edition of The LAW was made available for podcasting. The host's initial plan for the next week involved a returning John Pollock reviewing Impact's Bound For Glory 2017, and UFC 217.
It was reported on the Wrestling Observer / Figure Four Online website in Dave Meltzer's October 30 Daily Update that;
On the October 31 edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Meltzer stated "The amount of money that they're (Anthem) losing on Impact, has led to them doing cuts on the Fight Network" and "All the particulars (Presenters) that were on the show you know, are going to be gone." He went on to speculate that The LAW may be turned into an "Impact promotional show".Daily Update: Raw ratings, The LAW, NJPW junior tag team tournament By Dave Meltzer (Oct 30, 2017 4:09 pm)
Many of the LAW hosts including those from the associated podcasts received overwhelming support from their fans on Twitter, including Jason Agnew, John Pollock, Wai Ting, Braden Herrington, "Bartender" Dave, Brian Mann, and Nate Milton, while Chris Charlton, WH Park, Martian Bushby, and Richard Benson publicly thanked The LAW & John Pollock for their opportunities with "Japanese Audio Wrestling" and "British Audio Wrestling" respectively. Oli Court of "British Audio Wrestling" hinted "it's not the end of anything just yet!" and Jojo Remy of "Japanese Audio Wrestling" stated "Not sure what this means for my show. I’ll continue to be a strong presence at Voices of Wrestling."
Starting with the day after the shutdown of the LAW, John Pollock and Wai Ting continued to post audio reviews of Raw and SmackDown, under the temporary titles of John Pollock and Wai Ting Review Raw and John Pollock and Wai Ting Review SmackDown, respectively. On their first episode as independent podcasters, both hosts (Pollock had been one of Fight Network's longest-tenured employees, and, at the time of their release, one of the few remaining full-time journalists) discussed the news of being released from Fight Network (also stating that Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski and Jason Agnew were released), thanking their fans for all the support they received, their plans for their "future endeavours", alongside the review of Raw.
Post cancellation
In January 2018, Impact Wrestling announced that a new show with the Live Audio Wrestling name will air as part of its Twitch channel, as a video podcast hosted by Jeremy Borash. The new show was officially announced on April 3, 2018 as Sunday Night's Main Event, and was set to air the following Sunday; immediately following Wrestlemania 34. However, owing to Borash's departure in April 2018, the show never aired.
The spiritual successor of Live Audio Wrestling in its original form, titled "POST Wrestling" (the name is an abbreviation of "Pollock Offsets Ting"), was announced on December 15, 2017, and launched on December 24, 2017. It owned in its entirety by John Pollock and Wai Ting, and launched with their annual Christmas show that they had been doing from their days on the LAW.Two temporary podcasts done by the duo were folded under the Post Wrestling banner, becoming Rewind-a-Raw and Rewind-a-SmackDown, while other LAW podcasts would eventually be relaunched.
Show
Segments Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Extra: Each week industry insider Dave Meltzer joins the LAW to discuss the latest in pro wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts. Title Bout Trivia: Wrestling themed quiz where the winner receives a T-shirt from "Barber Shop Window" or "Pro Wrestling Tees". LAW Interviews: In depth and full-length interviews with wrestling's top stars from the past and present. Breaking The LAW: The Host read some fan feedback on the week in wrestling from "lawradio.proboards.com". LAW Xtra: Occasionally added on the end of the podcast, it covers smaller pay-per-view reviews (e.g. ROH, NJPW) or may include additional interviews. whtsNXTra: Added on the end of the podcast, covers NXT Takeover reviews.
Hosts Former co-hosts of the show include: Dan "The Mouth" Dan Lovranski (Producer: 1998–2000 / Host: 2000–2017) Jason Agnew (Producer: 1999–2003 / Host: 2003–2017) John Pollock (Editor: 2003–2005 / Producer: 2005–2017) Trish Stratus (Host: 1999) "Notorious T.I.D." Chris Tidwell (Host: 1997–1999) "Big Daddy" Donnie Abreu (Host: 1997–2000) "Gentleman" Jeff Marek (Host: 1997–2003)
Former co-hosts of the spinoff series shows include: Jason Agnew ("whts NXT": 2013–2017). John Pollock ("Review-A-Wai": 2009–2017; "Review-A-Raw": 2010–2017; "Review-A-SmackDown": 2011–2017; "The MMA Report": 2012–2017; "Bauer & Pollock": ?-2017) Wai Ting ("Review-A-Wai": 2009–2017; "Review-A-Raw": 2010–2017; "Review-A-SmackDown": 2011–2017) Braden Herrington ("whts NXT": 2013–2017). "Bartender" Dave ("whts NXT": 2016–2017). Brian Mann ("Review-An-Impact"/"Keep It 2000": 2015–2017). Nate Milton ("Review-An-Impact"/"Keep It 2000": 2015–2017). Jojo Remy ("Japanese Audio Wrestling": 2017–2017). WH Park ("Japanese Audio Wrestling": 2012–2017). Chris Charlton ("Japanese Audio Wrestling": 2012–2017). Martian Bushby ("British Audio Wrestling": 2017–2017). Oli Court ("British Audio Wrestling": 2017–2017). Richard Benson ("British Audio Wrestling": 2017–2017). ^ List of presenters only until time of hiatus, for full list of former presenters and spinoff series shows see below.
Spinoffs
Over the years, there have been several radio shows and podcasts that have complemented the LAW. Since the shutdown of the LAW, these shows were also put on hiatus, with many of them migrating to Post Wrestling upon the latter's launch in December 2017.
Review-A-Raw As a spinoff of Review-A-Wai, John Pollock and Wai Ting also review each week's edition of WWE Raw in a separate podcast series. As with Review-A-Wai, each episode John Pollock and Wai Ting run down the previous episode of WWE Raw and end by reading listener feedback. The first episode of Review-A-Raw was posted on July 6, 2010. For a time in 2011, Review-A-Raw was available as a live podcast, airing over the internet via Stickam immediately following WWE Raw, but it reverted to a taped format over technical issues resulting in one or both hosts being knocked off of the air.